Forfeiture Deal Over Iran Assets Sets Record

From Time, April 17, 2014, by Associated Press:

(NEW YORK) — A prosecutor says plans to sell a 36-story New York office building and other properties owned by Iran will produce the largest ever terrorism-related forfeiture.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara says a federal judge Thursday approved a settlement with 19 holders of terrorism-related judgments against the government of Iran.
The settling creditors include families and estates of victims of the 1983 terrorist bombings of U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, the 1996 terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and terrorist attacks in Israel and elsewhere.
Besides the Manhattan tower, buildings will be sold in California, Maryland, Texas and Virginia.

Prosecutors said funds will be added to accounts formerly in the name of entities that served as fronts for the Iranian government. The properties’ estimated total worth wasn’t provided Thursday.

The demagogues show up when the democrats become weak

From The Wall Street Journal, 17 April, by Daniel Henninger:

...The temptation to admire a Putin for what looks like decisiveness reflects a tension between the performance limits of democratic systems and those governments that are no longer answerable to their populations.

It is easy to appear to be a decisive national leader if, like Putin, the head of state is able to tell those who disagree with him to shut up or get beaten up or imprisoned or killed. Ignoring the crude truths of political life in Moscow today, or Berlin and Rome back then, is another variant of the same temptation to admire a demagogue’s monomania.

Further evidence of Putin’s fantastic leadership skills is also found in the results of independent polls, which report that his illegal annexation of Crimea and threats against independent Ukraine have the overwhelming support of the Russian people. And that they also admire Putin, who is restoring “respect” for Russia.

The weight of public opinion in Russia is no accident. Putin’s decisive actions on behalf of his imperiled, Russian-speaking victims in Crimea, Ukraine and Moldova, and soon the Baltics, are being supplemented in Moscow by a sophisticated, Goebbels-like brainwashing operation.

Over the years, Putin has put virtually all media, especially television, under his effective control. What the Russian people read, hear and see is a non-stop river of anti-US and anti-European propaganda. People who have lived in Russia recently say there has never been anything like the virulence of this invective, not even during the Cold War years. No one in the free world should want to be party to such massive falsity.

Still, there is the reality: the demagogues show up when the democrats become weak. Since the end of World War II, the traditional political leader of the Western democracies has been the president of the US. Policy differences aside, US presidents from Truman through to George W. Bush have been willing to lead, period. Now comes Barack Obama.

The famous oxymoron “leading from behind” emerged from the White House foreign-policy shop during the Libyan crisis. This notion is sometimes attributed to Obama’s leadership idiosyncrasies. That’s wrong. It summarises the explicit, thought-out strategy of the Democratic Party’s current generation of foreign-policy intellectuals.

The US “leads” by stepping aside and letting others — the Europeans, the UN — organise major foreign-policy initiatives. The Obama administration assigned Europe the task of weaning Ukraine away from Russia and bringing it into the EU. The non-result was predictable: western Europe’s leadership didn’t do it because they can’t.

They are too militarily weak, and too economically selfish and politically disorganised, to lead as one. So no one leads. Now, instead of fashioning a substantive response to the threat Putin poses, the Western democracies are blaming each other for their failure to respond.

...no serious person actually admires a country that is run with thugs, a controlled media and opponents in prison...

...There are two systems of government available: some version of ours or some version of propagandised authoritarianism — Putin’s system. If you want to live in a country with one foot in both systems, move to Turkey. For the rest of us, the answer is: elect a democratic leader more appropriate to the times we live in.

The reality remains that only one country’s people elect a leader in no small part for the role he will play beyond its borders: the Americans. For a frustrated world grasping at desperate solutions, the 2016 US presidential campaign to succeed Barack Obama can’t start soon enough.

OBAMA: 'YOU'RE NOT SCARING US

From breitbart, 2 mar 2014, by Joel b pollack:

Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post columnist and author of the forthcoming The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, reacted swiftly ...to President Barack Obama's suggestion ...that time is running out for Israel to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians: "I think Obama needs to realize that he is not scaring us," she said.

Obama ...warned that "the window is closing for a peace deal that both the Israelis can accept and the Palestinians can accept--in part because of changes in demographics," and added that Israel was on a path "to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank," along with international pressure and isolation.

Glick disputed Obama's claims vigorously. "The demographic data [Obama] is using to threaten Israel with destruction are phony. Even officials at the U.S. Census Bureau privately acknowledge that demographics work in Israel's favor and to the Palestinians' detriment," she said, noting that Palestinian growth had been inflated.

"When he talks about a permanent occupation, we speak of a permanent liberation. We are not 'occupying' the West Bank of the Jordan. These areas are part of the sovereign territory allocated to the Jewish people by the international community as far back as 1922. They were never granted to anyone else in a legally binding way. 

"More than three quarters of the Jews of Israel believe in incorporating all or parts of the West Bank into Israel on a permanent basis," she added. "We know the two-state peace plan is a lie. We know the PLO wants to destroy Israel more than it wants a Palestinian state. And we know that we will not lose our Jewish majority if we incorporate the West Bank into Israel. 

"He says, beware and we say, 'Bring it on. We aren't afraid of you.'"

Disgusting, politically manipulative uses and accusations of antisemitism in Ukraine

From The Australian, 18 April 2014, by AFP:

PAMPHLETS ordering Jews in east Ukraine's main city to register sparked a fierce storm of indignation, with strident condemnation from Western officials and dire fears of a Nazi-style pogrom — but were sceptically dismissed by the local chief rabbi as nothing more than “provocation”.

“What happened of course smells of a provocation. As to who is behind it — that is an open question,” rabbi Pinkhas Vyshedski said in comments published on the website of the Donetsk Jewish community.

The fliers — which told Jews they had to register with the region's self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist authorities or face deportation and confiscation of their property — were handed out late Tuesday in front of the synagogue in the city of Donetsk by three unidentified men in camouflage uniforms and ski masks who left before police arrived.
Reports of the incident, picked up by Israeli and US media, caused outrage and concerns that the pro-Russian separatists were starting a persecution of Jews reminiscent of that carried out by the Nazis leading up to World War II.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said after participating in talks with Ukrainian and Russian counterparts in Geneva that the distribution of the pamphlets was “grotesque”.
“In the year 2014, after all of the miles travelled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable, it's grotesque. It is beyond unacceptable,” he told reporters.
The US embassy in Kiev confirmed to AFP that some in the Jewish community had told it they were worried by the tracts.
The ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, told CNN: “Everything that we're hearing is that this is the real deal, and that it is apparently coming from somebody on the ground there among these radical groups, either to stir fear or to create provocation justifying further violence.” But scepticism immediately followed.
The struggle over east Ukraine, where Kiev is wrestling to assert its authority after the seizure of public buildings in 10 towns by pro-Russian separatists, is awash with propaganda and actions designed deliberately to inflame hostility towards one side or the other.
As well as the doubts expressed by the region's chief rabbi, one of the world's main groups fighting anti-Semitism, the US-based Anti-Defamation League, stressed in a statement that it, too, was “sceptical about the flier's authenticity”.

“We have seen a series of cynical and politically manipulative uses and accusations of anti-Semitism in Ukraine over the past year,” said the group's national director, Abraham Foxman.

Nevertheless, he added, “we strongly condemn the anti-Semitic content, but also all attempts to use anti-Semitism for political purposes.” 

Russia has repeatedly accused the new authorities in Kiev of being dominated by anti-Semites and fascists following the ouster of Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych in February.

The Jordan Valley is Israel’s Only Defensible Eastern Border

From BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 244, April 14, 2014, by Maj. Gen. (res.)Uzi Dayan*:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel has a natural right to, and an internationally recognized need for, defensible borders. The Jordan Valley is the only truly defensible eastern border for Israel.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 stated that Israel must have “secured and recognized boundaries” – borders that are not necessarily identical to the indefensible lines that preceded the war. The resolution did not demand that the IDF retreat completely to the 1947 lines. Even back then it was understood that the 1967 lines were too tempting to Israel’s enemies.

In 2004, the United States gave Israel a letter of guarantee that recognized Israel’s right to “defensible borders that would allow it to defend itself by itself.” This document was signed by President George W. Bush and backed by a bi-partisan majority in the American Congress.

As we seek to determine the location of these defensible borders for Israel, we must take into account two main factors, with a long-term and historic perspective. First, we have to consider the threats to Israel – conventional warfare, missiles and rockets, terrorism, nuclear weapons. Second, we have to consider the geo-strategic and the topographic situation.

The State of Israel is by no means a weak nation, but it is vulnerable because it is small and narrow. Seventy percent of its population and 80 percent of its industrial capacity is concentrated in the narrow coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the West Bank.

The hills of the West Bank topographically dominate the exposed coastal plain, which contains a significant share of Israel’s national infrastructures, including: Ben-Gurion International Airport, the Trans-Israel Highway (Road 6), Israel’s National Water Carrier, its main high-voltage electric power lines, and more. This topography gives a distinct advantage to any attacker in terms of observation, firepower, and good defensive capability against an Israeli ground response.

These reasons led the architects of Israel’s national security doctrine, from Yigal Alon and Moshe Dayan to Yitzhak Rabin, to tenaciously oppose Israel’s return to the vulnerable 1967 lines; which, they believed, would only invite aggression and endanger the future of Israel rather than pave a path towards peace.

Many years have passed and the need for defensible borders has only increased. Indeed, the history of Arab aggression against Israel and chronic instability in the Middle East has recently been compounded by a number of significant developments.

The “Arab Spring” or ‘uprising’ has led to civil wars and unprecedented bloodshed, increased terrorism, and even introduced global jihadist terror to the Middle East. This threatens regimes and reinforces the region’s fundamental uncertainty.

Iran is doggedly moving towards nuclear weapons, and is aggressively involved in every conflict in the region; establishing “outposts” in neighboring countries.

Never-ending terrorism is on the rise, and its effectiveness has grown with the development of terror-by-rocket. The involvement of terrorist organizations in regime struggles, the introduction into the region of global jihadist terrorism and Iran’s involvement have made terrorism a strategic threat that could lead to war in the region.

Renewed efforts to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a peaceful resolution places the issue of borders on the negotiating table and puts it at the forefront of the core issues under dispute.

Defensible borders for Israel must meet the following criteria: Fundamental strategic depth; room to wage war against the threat of conventional attack from the outside; and room that allows for effectively combating terrorism.

In the south of Israel (with the demilitarization in Sinai) and in the north (given that Israel has held onto the Golan Heights), Israel has defensible borders.

What is the meaning of the criteria for defensible borders on the eastern front?

First, Israel requires fundamental strategic depth, whose importance only increases in the age of ballistic missiles and long-range rockets – which threaten civilian population centers and even impact upon military recruitment and the deployment of reserve forces.

Under these conditions IDF ground units will be forced to operate for long periods of time without significant assistance from the Israeli Air Force. The air force will be busy achieving air superiority through destroying enemy air defenses and suppressing the launching of ballistic missiles and rockets aimed at Israel’s cities. In addition, the threat of nuclear arms in the region reinforces the need for a strategic depth required to deploy early warning and interception systems.

Second, Israel needs depth to wage defensive war against the threats from conventional attack from the east. Uncertainty and concern regarding the directions in which Iraq and Jordan may develop, and civil war in Syria that threatens to spill over to its neighbors, makes this depth critical.

Third, Israel must retain room to fight terrorism effectively. Only Israel’s presence on the outer eastern border of the West Bank (the Jordan River and Valley) will enable genuine demilitarization of the Palestinian Authority, which is a condition for any stable arrangement and one of Israel’s fundamental conditions for agreeing to a two state solution.

Thus Israel’s only possible defensible border is in the Jordan Valley!

It is important to remember that Israel is on average only 40 miles wide from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. This is, in all opinions, the minimal strategic depth and indivisible air space.

The width of the Jordan Rift Valley ranges between 6.7 and 14.5 km. The Jordan River flows at an altitude of some 400 meters below sea level, and to the west is a ridge of mountains rising up to a height of up to more than 1,000 meters above sea level. Thus, the Jordan Valley is a physical defensive barrier with a height of 900 to 1,400 meters, which is traversable only by five essential mountain passes. Therefore, even the limited force of the IDF standing army should be able to successfully defend Israel against an attack from the east as long as it is deployed in the Jordan Valley and on the ridges that control it from the west.

The Jordan Valley is the eastern buffer zone surrounding the State of Israel in general and the city of Jerusalem, its capital, in particular. Experience from Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Gaza has taught us that if Israel fails to control the buffer zone, the entire area we withdraw from will become a terrorist entity. And it is important to note that the Jordan Valley is an arid region with very little Palestinian population.

All this makes the Jordan Valley a vital line of defense for Israel’s security. It is no wonder that Yitzhak Rabin, in his last speech to the Knesset in October 1995 stated that Israel must, in any peace agreement, control the Jordan Valley “in the broadest meaning of the term.”

There are those who would attempt to dispute this security statement by proposing the placement of early detection systems in the Jordan Valley backed by the deployment of foreign forces. However, experience proves that no warning system can replace the defensive space of the Jordan Valley, and that Israel must not rely on foreign forces for the combat of terrorism nor as a defensive force. Foreign troops will not risk their lives for the war on terror and they will be the first ones to leave should a crisis arise. Only Israeli forces can provide the security Israel needs.

Consequently, Israel must move from a policy of “security based on international agreements and diplomatic guarantees” to a policy of “agreements based on security provided by Israeli forces deployed in defensible spaces.” Neither the Green Line nor the Security Fence can serve as Israel’s defensible border. Only full Israeli control of the entire Jordan Valley region as a security area, based on the Jordan River as a boundary line, will be able to provide Israel with sufficient security.

Defensible borders will not only ensure Israel’s security needs but will also guarantee that peace treaties are sustainable.

*Maj. Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan was head of the IDF Central Command, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff, and National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel.